A partial list of my Mormon failures, annotated.

Aged 1 month. With my Anglican relatives in attendance, I am blessed at church. Years of my parents claiming that they had not joined an American sect were undone when someone decided the congregation would sing America the Beautiful.

Aged 6 years. My first Primary talk on immorality and eternal life. The older kids laugh. I do not know why.

Aged 7 years. I tell my Gentile neighbour that he is going to hell because he doesn’t go to church. His parents tell my parents that unless I stop Bible-bashing, we can’t be friends.

Aged 8 years. My post-baptism state of blissful sinlessness is shattered exactly one hour after my baptism when I punch a friend on the arm.

Aged 9 years. For a school project, I write that I will one day be buried with the “Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price and will rule over worlds as a priest after the order of Melchizedek.” My teacher consults the manual on how to deal with children who belong to cults.

Aged 14 years. I put Sprite in the sacrament cups. Not all of them, mind you.

Aged 16 years. I read the Miracle of Forgiveness and realise that it will indeed be a miracle to ever get forgiveness for all the horrors I have committed. Still, I keep committing them.

Aged 16 1/2 years. I begin dating a nice Mormon girl. I spend a year wishing I was 21 and married.

Aged 19 years. I enter the MTC and serve a mission in Austria. My family and the church spend $50,000 for each of my baptisms.

Aged 21 years. I extol the virtues of my missionary service in a job interview. I don’t get the job.

Aged 22 years. I am heckled during a sacrament talk for using the word “Mormons” rather than “members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Aged 22 years. I become Teh Presiderer. Presidering FAIL.

Aged 24 years. I am asked to teach Institute in Oxford and move the class from the chapel to one of the colleges. The Town students accuse me of Gown elitism and boycott the class.

Preach It:

Comments

I remember by first post-baptism sin as well. I got mad and hit my little brother.

Also, I always joked about putting Sprite in the sacrament cups, but never actually did it. My idea was to spike just one cup in the tray, and then watch everyone’s facial expression as they drank, to try and figure out who got the Sprite cup. Did you get in trouble, Ronan? And if so, did you cite D&C 27:2?

The Sprite one is very funny. I am prohibited from sugar — was it Diet Sprite or the real deal? Crap, I would have had to spit out the real Sprite. What would have been the religious significance of that??

I have a friend, named Joel, who used lemonade in the sacrament once. On another time, he felt the water was to warm, and so placed the trays the night before in the freezer. How was he to know the stake president was going to visit that Sunday, and would not be amused at crunching his water?

As for still not being a high priest, I invite you to move to my ward in Indy. I’m sure, as high priest group leader, I can arrange it….

Your family and the church spent $50,000 for you to call sinners to repentance so they will be left without excuse. ;) Actually, I prefer to think of it as an investment in good blog posts in years to come. The investment was obviously well worth it.

Since Ronan went on his mission 14 years ago, I’m sure the cost was standardized. $50,000 over 24 months assumes the mission costs about $2100 a month. Austria might cost $4000 a month, but certainly not $6000 a month.

So Ronan had two baptisms in Austria, since he did use the plural “baptisms”.

Ronan
I served in Austria, too.
19- I think Ronan’s point is that you don’t baptize a whole lot in Austria. In fact, my parents paid all that money so I could get really good at bearing my testimony. Still worth it.

Incidentally, Ronan, if you haven’t seen the film “The Errand of Angels” (some type of BYU) production) you ought to check it out. It’s about sister missionaries in Austria, and boy did they hit the nail on the head- I suspect maybe one of my former companions wrote it.

I remember a TR interview when I was chained to the clerk’s office, where the counselor made some snarky comment about never seeing me in SS. I whipped out my clerk to-do list and offered to trade with him…

There seems to be some strong love for Indian cuisine here on BCC today. I, too, would have been there for that EQ activity. Do all Mormon bloggers love Indian food? Is there a higher rate of Indian food loving among Mormons who blog over the general Mormon populace? It is these questions to which inquiring minds want answers!

Serving in Austria is worth every penny. I’m leaving here Friday and I miss it already. I served in Arkansas. We ate squirrel and rabbit (really). No Winerschnitzel. You’ve lived a lucky and magical life. Your two Baptisms in Austria still stand as the record!

So, $50,000 per year to maintain a missionary companionship in Austria, a country where the per capita GDP (PPP) is $45,800, compared with the U.S. where it is $39,300. I suppose the difference is that Austria’s poverty rate is 6% and for the U.S., it is 12%. More options for cheap, lousy living in the land of opportunity.

American missionaries paid standard fees for missions before the rest of the world did. I served from England in England and my mission was roughly $1200 a month. Plus there was an initial fee associated with kitting out for the mission. Not that this may be the case for Ronan though.

Confession: I pulled that $50k figure from my hat, so please worry about it no longer. I seem to remember that the office elders figured out the mission budget and divided it per baptism. The number was high. Beyond that, I’m talking rubbish as usual.

I have to agree that I don’t really see these as failings. You’re like the guy who says in a job interview that his greatest weakness is that he “works too hard.” Now, if you had put vodka in the sacrament cups, or filled the bottoms to the brim with water, or at least jumped mission boundaries, we’d have some things to talk about here.

Age 20 – I learned to play Halo on my junior companion’s Xbox. I also learned that goldfish meant for the same comp’s piranhas counted as “pets”, not “food”. The piranhas were also deemed “pets” as well.

re: Miracle of Forgiveness. It’s a cultural artifact. Even Pres Kimball regretted it. It helped people at the time, and frightened others. More light and knowledge have now come into the world. … but I , at least, finally did get why being forgiven was a miracle …

I have owned a copy of the Miracle of Forgiveness for years (it was a gift), but I haven’t dared read much of it (I did look up Cain).

I loved reading the biographies of President Kimball a few years ago. Reading about the stark juxtaposition of light and darkness in the life of an apostle of his era (maybe any era) was very interesting. One minute he was sealing young couples in the temple. The next appointment might well be counseling someone with very severe sins. It was a very busy and stressful life. He seems to have literally worked himself to death (though dying at 90 doesn’t seem to be an early death).

If I ever get called to be a bishop, I plan to read it. In the meantime it sits menacingly on my shelf.